Sentencing begins for woman convicted in deadly Turnpike wrong-way crash
Sunshine Perez’s sentencing started in Broward after the wrong-way Turnpike crash that killed paramedic Zeke Urrutia, on a highway where similar deaths keep recurring.
Sentencing began in Broward County for Sunshine Perez, the woman convicted in the deadly wrong-way crash that killed 23-year-old paramedic Zeke Urrutia on Florida’s Turnpike. The hearing moved the case from guilt to punishment on one of the county’s busiest highways, where a single wrong-way entry can turn a commute into a fatal collision.
Perez’s guilty plea had already stunned Urrutia’s parents. When they spoke about the loss, they said, “Our lives are destroyed.” The sentence now pending in Broward will determine how the court punishes Perez for the crash that killed Urrutia.
The case lands in a county that has already seen other wrong-way Turnpike tragedies. A driver was killed in a wrong-way crash on the Broward stretch of Florida’s Turnpike on Jan. 9, 2025, and the highway shut down northbound at Commercial Boulevard after a deadly crash on July 7, 2025. Those incidents showed how fast a wrong-way vehicle can force lane closures and emergency response across Broward.
The pattern widened later in 2025. A wrong-way crash on Florida’s Turnpike left two people dead and two injured on Nov. 2, and investigators were still examining two deadly wrong-way Turnpike crashes that happened minutes apart in Miami-Dade County on Nov. 3. For Broward, the sentencing in Perez’s case comes against a backdrop of repeated crashes that have kept the Turnpike in the public safety spotlight.
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